Undergrad Travel Grants for Research!

The Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR) at the University of Illinois is pleased to announce its spring 2013 competition for travel grants to subsidize the presentation of undergraduate research at professional conferences.  Proposals should be submitted at https://illinois.edu/fb/sec/2164154 and the deadline for submission is 1 May 2013.

In order to apply, students will need to have information on the conference dates and location, evidence that conference participation has been confirmed, estimated expenses, and possible support from mentors and departments.

Please note that the travel grants are designed for students to present their research during the summer and fall semesters 2013 (another competition will be announced later in 2013).  In addition, these travel grants are not designed to cover the entire cost of student participation (some departmental or college contribution is encouraged) nor can the grant be used to cover post conference participation.

Questions should be directed to ugresearch@illinois.edu

Former Student Aims High

One of our undergrads is competing to go into space!  He’ll be on campus for Engineering Open House this weekend.  Go check him out and show your support!

Hi everybody,

So AXE, the deodorant company and not the chemistry fraternity, teamed up with Space Expedition Corporation, a private aerospace company developing a miniature space shuttle, to send a few people from around the world to outer space.  The United States gets two seats.  One of them was assigned with a sweepstakes during the Superbowl.  The other one will be determined at a later date.  The competition I’m in would allow me to get a chance to get that other seat.  I am basically in a popularity contest:  the top two spots with the most amount of votes move on to attend Space Camp.  The two winners will join eight others chosen from other sweepstakes to go to Space Camp.  The last seat for space travel will be chosen from people attending.  Space Camp itself should be fairly exciting:  it covers a ride in a fighter jet, a microgravity flight, and simulator space flight.  I am currently in 24th place in that popularity contest.  I’ve been dressing up as an astronaut everyday at George Mason University (just doing everyday things like doing hw, eating, going to class, etc…) and I’ll do the same at U of I when I visit March 8-10.  That’s during my spring break so I’ll also have time to hand out flyers/pamphlets. The school newspaper there is going to run a story on me fairly soon.

For my graduate studies, I am pursing a Master’s degree in chemistry.  My advisor is Paul Cooper and he specializes in the chemistry of planetary ices.  The research I am conducting involves elucidating the mechanism behind methanol formation in irradiated ice.  Water ice is the most dominant ice in the solar system and that ice is constantly bombarded by high-speed electrons, protons, and ions.  This can lead to the creation of new and more complex chemical species if the ice contains other primordial chemical species like methane or carbon dioxide.  My experiments involve shooting high speed electrons at water ice laced with methane.  We identify various products using IR spectroscopy and mass spectroscopy.  The exact mechanism or mechanisms of formation will be identified by using deuterium that will replace the hydrogen atoms in either the methane or water so that we can trace the movement of the hydrogen atoms.

-Kamil

Matt Grobis Earns a Fulbright Grant!

This is a testimonial from Matt Grobis, one of our outstanding IB Honors students who just earned a Fulbright Grant to study in Germany next year.  Take a look to learn about what he is going to be doing and how you can follow his lead!


Matt Grobis Fulbright picTo those who haven’t heard of the Fulbright grant, a Fulbright is funding to do research or teach English for one year in a foreign country. Because everything is paid for, you can imagine it’s fairly competitive. (For more info, go to http://us.fulbrightonline.org)

I was lucky enough to be selected for one. Next year, I’ll be carrying out a Fulbright research grant at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, in Germany, studying the intersection of great tit personality and social behavior. One of the projects I’m looking forward to working on is examining how birds of different degrees of boldness rely on conspecifics to find food. One application of this is ensuring beneficial human-animal interactions; understanding how knowledge about foraging sites travels through groups can help us predict native bird populations’ responses to anthropogenic habitat change, for example. I will be working with Dr. Niels Dingemanse, a researcher at the MPIO and also a professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University, in Munich. The Institute is located a forty-minute train ride south of Munich and I’m very excited to explore the city and learn about German culture. Hopefully a year of German at U of I is enough to let me get by, though I’ll be keeping a dictionary close by!

I first learned of the Fulbright a year ago, when I was looking at graduate schools. I found a girl doing really cool research on tiger-human conflict in India and e-mailed her, asking if she had any advice for how she got to where she was. In her very helpful response, she mentioned her Fulbright year in India and how it’d helped her decide what to do for a PhD. Shortly afterwards, I met with the head of my research lab, Alison Bell, and asked for her help finding someone with whom I could do research abroad. Dr. Dingemanse’s research interested me the most, and after an e-mail that took me a few tries to write, I received a good response! We e-mailed back and forth over project ideas and came up with a tentative project. Meanwhile, I was working on my Fulbright application with the help of the National and International Scholarships Office at U of I (http://topscholars.illinois.edu). I’m very thankful to Laura Hastings and David Schug, who helped me through every step of my application. I would recommend to anyone even considering pursuing the Fulbright to fill out an application; the process of organizing your life up to this point and deciding what direction you want to go with it now was immensely helpful.

I was on the waitlist for ten weeks, so I feel very, very fortunate to be in this position. My advice to anyone considering applying for a Fulbright comes in four parts. First, start early! It’s crazy to think I started working on my Fulbright application over a year before I heard the final result. First drafts of essays are always terrible and it takes everyone a while to find an angle to their application. Keep pushing. Have friends, family, and professors give you feedback, and you’ll end with something you’re happy with. Second, find very good reasons why your Fulbright has to be in the country you chose. If you want to teach English in Ecuador, why not Colombia, Peru, Chile, Panama, or Spain? How is a neuroscience lab in Switzerland better than MIT or Cambridge? Outside of research, what can you offer Madagascar that you couldn’t to South Africa or Ghana? Third, be as specific as possible whenever possible. Anyone can write “I plan to volunteer while I’m in Vietnam” and get away with it. It looks much, much better to write “I have contacted this non-profit in the nearby town, which is ten minutes away by bike, and the head of the program, Mrs. such and such, has agreed that I can help on these projects.” Fourth, throughout the whole process, be humble and thankful. Your application needs to make you look awesome, true, but your success highly depends on the help of a lot of people. Say thanks to your letter of recommendation writers. Understand that the person you contact to do research with is taking a chance by responding to an e-mail from someone he or she has never met.

If you apply and you’re lucky, you will get to spend a year in another country learning from others and about yourself. But even if you don’t receive a grant, you will still learn from the experience and be better-prepared for selling yourself to graduate schools or potential employers. I wish you the best of luck! Send your applications to the National and International Scholarships Office before the July 1 priority deadline (if you can!), and please e-mail me if you’d like advice or another pair of eyes on your essays. matt.grobis@gmail.com

Jeff Miguel Visits the Galapagos

Jeff Miguel on the Galapagos Islands

Many of our Integrative Biology students choose to study abroad and conduct research in the field. Jeff Miguel, pictured to the right, spent the fall of 2010 in Ecuador and the Galapagos islands studying Marine Ecology by enrolling in the Galapagos program (GAIAS) at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito.

Jeff spent the first month in Quito and the coast of Ecuador and the last three months on the actual Galapagos Islands. During his time there, he stayed with host families and got to know the locals quite well. This picture was taken on a regular day during his walk to class.

Yes, there was even coursework! Jeff completed five courses with a Marine Ecology focus in three week modules.

If you’re interested in taking your studies beyond the classroom, talk with an Integrative Biology Academic Advisor today!